1. Intro
2. Recap of week 73 to 76
3. That real desert desert experience
4. The biggest market for croc sandals that didn’t happen
5. I'm a selfie celebrity wherever I stop
6. Probably the friendliest people on earth
7. Taarof and the Iranian art of etiquette
8. Small kids on motorbikes and the impossible act of paying separately
9. Spontaneous winter break in Dubai
10. Respect and trust

The second part of my bike touring blog for Iran. From Isfahan to Bandar Abbas. From sand dunes in vast desert landscapes, under starry skies and rising blood moons to gas station camping and a sudden change in the weather as I arrived on the humid and warm coast of the Persian Gulf.

Straight out of Isfahan we reached the sand dune desert of Varzaneh. Finally that real desert experience. And this would last all the way to Bandar Abbas. The empty scenery with flat roads invited long days on the bike. A friendly but insisting local, who we suspected of being a policeman in civilian clothes, made us take a big detour from Hasanabad and onto the highway between Izedkhast and Safashahr. After several hundred kilometers on the highway we were relieved to turn off it and to cycle the southern edge of the Bakhtegan National Park which was a big highlight. Estahban marked the end of the national park and from here we had a joy ride of pure downhill with amazing views of the city of Ij before we entered Darab with a setting sun behind us casting off a spectacular glowing light and gliding shades on the mountainous landscape. From Darab there was a whole lot of nothingness until Lar. It was a long distance where it was no trouble to bike under starry skies on less busy roads. All of the sudden Bandar Abbas was getting real close and in a matter of a day I dropped all of the elevation meters and was almost at sea level again. The weather changed abruptly and the humid +30 degrees was making me struggle as I biked the last kilometers into Bandar Abbas. After some relaxing days I took the ferry to UAE where I have decided to take a spontaneous winter break.

After some 1000 kilometers I finally got to see it. The thing I had wanted and desired and wished for since I entered Iran. A proper, good, dry, barren, golden desert. It actually didn’t take that much longer than a day’s ride from Isfahan. As we were leaving the metropolis of Isfahan and passed Varzaneh I could sense I was headed for something spectacular. Golden sand dunes raised up ahead of me. This would signal the beginning of a desert environment that would last pretty much all the way down to Bandar Abbas. It changes in looks from fine grained sandy plains to bushy greens spread out on hard packed rocky surfaces. Some days the plains were so vast I could only see the outlines of mountains behind a wall of heat fog and dust. Other days the mountains would stand as tall giants next to the road

I had spotted a small road going from Hasanabad to Abarkuh and further on to Marvast. Figured this to be a nice road bypassing the highway. It also had the least amount of elevation meters of the alternatives and was actually the reason why we had taken the road to Varzaneh. Seemed to be a perfect plan. At a nearby gas station, before we were turning off the main road, we were stocking up on water and snacks. For the next 100km we wouldn’t pass any civilization at all. I went to use the toilet and when I came back a random guy had stopped at the gas station and without introducing himself he just put a phone in my hand. On the line was an English speaking person introducing himself as an english teacher. Then he would go on to say that our planned route was dangerous because of traffic. I found this to be very weird. First of all, how did he know where we were heading? Second, he wanted us to take a big detour onto the highway claiming that would be safer which also made no sense at all. This scenic road we planned to take hardly had any traffic so how could that be more dangerous. As I countered all of his arguments saying that I didn’t really think he was correct in his assessment, he kept on finding other arguments for us to take the highway. In the end I asked directly if he was with the police which flustered him a bit. Of course he stuck to the version of him being an english teacher which I actually didn’t believe. This looked very much to be undercover police not wanting us to take that road to Abarkuh. Once before, just after Hamedan, we had a similar experience with a civilian car following us down a solitary road asking us to turn around because the road was dangerous due to traffic. That time we didn’t follow the advice and continued just to be stopped the day after and taken to a police station for an interview. Just before our interview we had been stopped in the morning by an official police car telling us to stay away from a forbidden area. So this time around I got a feeling of deja vu. There was something down that road they didn’t want us to get close to. On the maps, there was absolutely nothing. I know that you should stay well clear of military facilities in Iran and I did plan the route to go far around them. That was easy because they are clearly marked on the map. But the secret stuff is obviously not marked and I absolutely didn’t want to get close to it so I reluctantly agreed with the English teacher to take the detour onto the highway.

The detour would add a full day’s biking to our route and we also wanted to reach the highway that day as we were advised to do. It just meant we would be biking at night on the highway. I didn’t know it at the time but we would very often bike into the night the following two weeks. There was something magic about biking into the sunset and seeing a big blood moon rise up behind you. To continue into the night biking under a million stars. All the scenery and views are gone. Just me and the blanket of stars above you. Just me and the bike floating away in a big ocean of darkness.

However big the magic it’s still a risk biking in complete darkness only visible by your bike lights. But still onto the dark highway we went. There was a police station where we asked to sleep but they declined us and said there would be a motel down the road which we didn't find. Sleeping next to the highway is absolutely no fun so we biked into the nearest village. The village was completely dark. No lights at all. We guessed it was a ghost town and was about to head onto the highway again. As we were turning around a car came and stopped. And this being Iran, you didn’t need to wait many seconds before you were invited to sleep at their house.

It turned out that the village had a power cut and a few hours later the lights came back on. While the house had been dark I was searching with my flashlight to find the proper pair of sandals to use when going to the bathroom. In the homes of Iranians you of course park your shoes outside. But that doesn’t mean you have to tiptoe around on bare feet. Iranians have a set of sandals for each purpose. There is a set of sandals you use when you go to the toilet. There is another set to use when taking a shower. And there are additional sets to use when you go into the garden. There are sandals everywhere to keep your feet dry and clean so you don’t mess up the very beautiful carpets that cover every living room’s floor. You quickly catch up to the system and each time I slipped into the appropriate set of sandals I said to myself that the croc sandals makers could have made a fortune if they had been first movers of what I think must be the biggest single market for sandals.

I really liked being invited into local homes. After a long day of riding in empty deserts you like the company and it’s a very good and special way to connect with the locals. You just have to deal with the fact that Iranians are good sleepers and late risers. Being on the road and sleeping in your tent, you can’t help to adjust your daily rhythm to the rising and setting of the sun. But this gets all thrown out of sync when you are hosted by locals because they stay up late. We would eat close to ten in the evening and go to bed by midnight which made it a challenge for me to keep my eyes open.

I believe it is common that women and men sleep separately and when it would be time to settle in for the night, the dinner would be cleared off the living room floor and a few blankets would be carried out and spread out on the floor. Iranians are used to sleeping on the floor it seems. They don’t mind a hard surface to sleep on. For me, that is very uncomfortable. I’m not as tough as Iranians. Back home I have my ‘Golden Plus’ triple layered memory foam mattress as a bed. I really admire how minimalistic Iranians are. I just need some more practice before being able to sleep on a hard surface. So everytime I would be hosted I took out my sleeping pad and one time I had my host try it out. He was not particularly impressed by the soft airy cushioning. This minimalistic way is so resource efficient and should stand as an inspiration to us all. You can manage with very little and I just think it’s a matter of getting used to things. Some tell me that it is actually healthy to sleep on hard surfaces and I did go for some nights without my sleeping pad. I’m not there yet but I’m making an effort.

Regardless of going to bed late when we got hosted, we started the day early at no later than eight which was a bit awkward because I felt so honored and grateful to be hosted and then I would just rush out in the morning before they would even wake up. Somehow I think we managed to explain this to our hosts and we also underlined that we just wanted them to sleep in but they insisted on serving us breakfast so they would get up early to make sure we didn’t start the day on an empty stomach. I will never forget the hospitality of the Iranian people.

We were making our way past Safashahr and finally left the highway after several hundred kilometers of dense traffic. Leaving the highway also meant that we would pass smaller towns again. If possible we ate lunch in town. What usually happened was that everyone knew that foreigners were around in a matter of minutes. Everybody wants to say hello and I absolutely love it. You can be certain that almost every encounter ends with a selfie - and the selfie doesn't end up on your own phone but on a curiously friendly Iranian’s phone.

This happens when you enter towns. This happens when you sit and eat lunch. This happens when you leave town. This happens when you drive on lonely roads and a car suddenly stops ahead of you and asks for a photo. Yeah, I’m pretty much a selfie celebrity here.

And there is also no driving through a town or passing a day on the road without getting free handouts of fruit. Cars would literally just drive slowly next to or stop ahead of you to hand you fruits, water or snacks. At times you simply couldn't carry it all and had to decline. It’s just the thing that you can’t decline, they will not accept it. It is very common to see vendors selling fruit off the backs from their pick-up trucks and they are the biggest suppliers of fruit freebies. So in the end you stand there with your arms full of fruit and snacks trying to figure out where to put it all.

It was a time consuming process leaving the highway and getting onto the smaller roads towards Bakhtegan National Park with all the selfie stops and fruit handouts. On the way, we declined an invitation to eat lunch because a heavy thunderstorm was forecasted later that day and we really wanted to try to bike past it. With smiles on our faces and hands on the heart we thankfully said no thanks and expressed our big gratitude for the offer. We started biking but it seemed that this man wouldn’t want us to go hungry for long so half an hour later down the road a car, with what I think was his wife, passed us and handed me two big bags with a prepared hot meal for lunch, then turned around to head back to the village we came from.

I stood there speechless. The man from the previous village had prepared us lunch and sent his wife to find us up the road. This is so heartwarming. The generosity is unparalleled. We continued down the road but the promised thunderstorm came early and we took shelter at a gas station where we got invited inside the employee office to take shelter from the bad weather and of course they came with more food for us to eat. Traveling in Iran has been a big inspiration for me and this is something I will take with me back home and I will spread the word as much as I can. The cold Europeans of the north have much to learn from the warm people of Iran. People in Albania and Turkey were also very very friendly but I think Iran probably has the friendliest people on earth.

The lake of Bakhtegan National Park was one of the highlights between Isfahan and Bandar Abbas. A true gem. Pristine nature and quiet roads for many many hours. This region is known for its production of figs and of course we were given more dried figs than we could eat in weeks.

That made me think. Where does all this friendliness come from? Iranians have something called Taarof. I have heard about this before entering Iran so I had some idea of the etiquette surrounding this complex concept. Taarof is perhaps the most fundamental thing to understand about Iranian culture. It has so many layers and aspects that I will never fully understand it. But I believe that it has the positive effect of encouraging proper behavior towards others and especially guests involving compliments and gift giving. When an Iranian is doing the taarof thing, it is important to know it as a sincere offer but with the expectation of a decline. You should really decline several times all the way up to five times. If they keep offering after you have declined those five times, it is truly an offer you should accept with gratitude and a big respectful thank you.

I’m glad I knew this before entering Iran because this happens on a daily basis and as a western foreing you can misunderstand their intentions. So many times have I eaten lunch where they didn’t want to accept payment. You really have to insist and I did. After all, they are running a business and they did just serve you the most delicious lunch meal so of course they should receive money for it. But you have to keep insisting with a big smile and say you are most grateful for the offer and then in the end you pay. For some, I’ve heard, it can be a bit tiresome to go through it many times a day. Me, I absolutely loved it.

We could easily have stayed more days at the Bakhtegan Lake but Bandar Abbas was getting close and there were no bigger cities on my path anymore. Also, my 45 visa was running out and I didn’t know of any nearby immigration offices to extend it so we pedaled south doing a very scenic descent into the city of Ij and continued dropping altitude in a valley landscape leading to Darab. It was still very much like a barren landscape and I learned that a desert can take many shapes. It can be rocky, hilly and have mountains. When I think of deserts I think of sandy dunes in the Sahara but biking down on winding roads to Darab I realized that a desert is so much more than just sand. By definition I think everywhere is a desert as long as it has low annual rainfall. Antarctica would then actually be the biggest desert on earth because it doesn’t see much rainfall. Weird and unexpected but true. Although Iran has no desert like the one in Antarctica, you are definitely not bored by the monotone scenery because it kept changing as we were heading further south and I’m sure of all the shapes a desert can take, we saw most of it in Iran.

I guess it gets super warm here in the summer and I guess you don’t want to strain yourself in the summer heat by walking anywhere. Cars might be too expensive and perhaps that’s why there are motorcycles everywhere. At least all the young kiddos are riding a motorcycle. And I mean young kiddos. I’m not very good at guessing age but I am sure some of these kids were not older than ten years. On the way out of smaller towns they would follow you and at times I wondered if they actually knew how to drive. I was afraid they would crash into my bike but they are actually very good at it. They must practice a lot from an early age. Some of the older kids on the motorcycles would offer you to hold on as they would pull you uphill but that was just a little bit too risky for me. Besides, I like to do my own climbs.

We were dropping altitude meters fast now. After Darab I could almost smell the ocean. I was getting closer to the Persian Gulf. Andy was in a rush and didn’t have time to complete the last stretch. The mountains were also disappearing behind us and the busy port city of Bandar Abbas was making its mark with more urban settlements popping up along the road. I would still bike it all the way but Andy wanted to catch a ride and avoid the hectic roads. We had our last lunch together and however much we tried paying separately, we failed every time. Splitting a bill is apparently not a thing here. I could be standing five meters behind him in line to pay and the cashier would still add up my items and make whoever came first to the cashier pay. It was time to fix the last unsplittable bill, sort out the money and bike our separate ways.

Now it was just me and the bike on the roads again. A bit weird being alone again after having company for most of the time through Armenia and Iran. I reached the ocean, could smell the sea in the air and got hit like a sledgehammer by the humid warmth. It was like biking from winter to summer in one day. I landed in Bandar Abbas and took a small ferry to Hormoz to take a break and decide on my next step.

Hormoz is a small island just off the coast and a perfect getaway for some days. It’s a popular tourist destination for locals. I easily biked around the island in a day and settled in at a hostel taking some days asking myself now what.

My original plan was to bike east into Pakistan and spend the winter there and then do the northern parts of Pakistan and India during the coming summer. However, the situation was not getting any better in Iran. Protests were still going on and the authorities were getting more suspicious about foreigners. Several other travelers had been detained during the month I had been in the country. Out of the blue I started getting Whatsapp messages from the travel agency who helped me with the visa for Iran. When I told I was heading east towards the border of Pakistan I was told to absolutely not go there. I responded that I knew other biketourers crossing recently without any issues. But that didn’t make much difference. The travel agency already had two of their travelers recently being detained and they urged me several times to take the ferry to Dubai.

Doing the winter break in Dubai actually didn’t seem so bad and the idea had crossed my mind before. It just presented the challenge of getting a second visa for Iran to enter and cross the land border to Pakistan should the situation allow it. No second visa would mean I was forced to fly into Pakistan. I guess I will have to deal with that later on because I decided to follow the advice and took the ferry to Dubai. Now I’m in Dubai for New Years and the happy side effect of me staying here was that my mom and stepdad immediately booked a plane ticket once I told them about my changed plans. It turns out I am going to celebrate New Years with my family. It couldn’t have wished for a better Christmas present.

Looking back at my travels in Iran I am happy I did it. I met what I think are the friendliest people on the planet. I got to bike several weeks in amazing natural scenery. But I don’t want to leave the impression that traveling here is like a biketour in paradise. True, the locals would love you and make you feel utmost welcome. On the other side you have the government and authorities of Iran which are suspicious of all western presence in the country. After all, they put all the blame for the unrest on western governments claiming they were the mastermind behind the protests using it as a way to weaken and overthrow the regime. I’m just a simple traveler and will not do any speculations on the matter. Perhaps they are correct in their statement and have a good reason to be suspicious or perhaps it all is exaggerated paranoia.

I did hear stories both before, during and after my travels about what seems like arbitrary arrest of western travelers for baseless reasons. And the unrest that was present during my travels did not ease up on the relation to the west. I do believe that there was extra attention on me as an independent traveler on a bike. I was stopped several times by the police, both in uniform and in civilian clothes, and two times I was pulled off the street and sent to the police station where I had to do an interview. Those interviews are not a particularly nice experience. You get a trained interrogator in front you. The questions are very basic, straightforward and easy to answer. At the first interview there was a second person sitting next to the interrogator observing your behavior while you answered the questions. The second time I was pulled off the street they thoroughly looked through my phone, my action camera and my laptop. I didn’t feel at risk of being detained but I could have done without the interviews. Beside this, I had civilian police monitoring me along the road, coming to my tent at night asking questions and coming to the hotel I was staying at asking detailed questions about my route. Local Iranians can get in trouble if they are interacting too much with western people so think twice about doing Couchsurfing or Warmshovers in the country.

This is the flip side of the overall nice experience I had traveling in Iran and at times I wondered why they had given me the tourist visa at all. I got to experience this mistrust and suspicion first hand and perhaps the regime would just have preferred me to stay away.

There are two ways to gain knowledge for me. You can read about stuff or you can experience and observe. I guess I decided to go because I wanted to see for myself what Iran was like so I could make up my own impression of the country. And yeah, what I got to experience you have already read. I must admit that I entered the country with a suspicious mindset. This was given to me by the western media’s coverage of Iran. Did my view on Iran change as a result of my travels? Sure it did. Big time. Perhaps not in a way you would think. In short, we are very different countries with our own ways. That doesn’t matter. There is room for both. And we don’t need to accept everything that goes on in each other's countries. Every country has the right to shape its own path and learn from their own mistakes without interference from the outside world. There can still be respect and trust and mutual inspiration even though I know the road is bumpy and long. I felt the love of the Iranian people and we got along very well. Let’s put aside all the mistrust, doubts and suspicions. I know we can do this. At least, Iran and its people gained my respect and trust.

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